I am grateful to Tirthankar Roy for his prompt response, and his generosity in acknowledging the validity of some of my criticisms. It will be obvious to readers that there are some fundamental disagreements between us regarding what constitutes economic history. On this, and a number of other issues that Professor Roy has chosen not to address, it would be tedious to repeat myself; we must agree to disagree and invite readers of this journal to draw for themselves the conclusions they wish—and, ultimately, how fair I have been in assessing his book is something that readers will only be able to judge by reading it themselves. I focus below on the three core issues with which most of his response is concerned: ‘reading the past with reference to the present’, the importance of a ‘region-focused approach’, and the ‘comparative approach’.

The conceptualization of interrelations between biological and cultural diversity since the 1980s indicates a biocultural turn in discourses and policies regarding nature conservation, sustainable development, and indigenous peoples. These interrelations frequently manifest as conflicts between local communities who derive their livelihoods and identity from their lands and resources, and external actors and institutions who claim control over these areas, invoking superior interests in nature conservation, development, and modernization. In these asymmetric conflicts over biocultural diversity, framed in discourses that demand the preservation of both biological and cultural diversity, the opportunities for local communities to assert their claims crucially depend on external discursive and legal frameworks.

Based on a study of the Karen ethnic minority groups in the Thung Yai World Heritage Site in Thailand, this article explores challenges and chances for local communities to assert claims and rights to lands, resources, and self-determination in the context of the biocultural turn in environment and development discourses as well as heterogeneous legal frameworks. Human rights as individual rights are widely recognized, but may be difficult to enforce and of limited suitability in conflicts over biocultural diversity. Group rights like indigenous rights are increasingly devised to protect ethnic minorities and perpetuate cultural diversity, but are often disputed on the national level and may be ambiguous regarding heterogeneous communities. In Thailand and globally, community rights provide another promising framework with regard to conflicts over biocultural diversity if the claims of communities to livelihoods and self-determination are respected.

This article examines the rise of the international refugee regime in Asia, focusing on the work of the International Refugee Organization in repatriating overseas Chinese from mainland China back to their homes in Southeast Asia from 1947 to 1956. It looks both at how the International Refugee Organization inherited this repatriation project from its predecessor—the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration—and its survival after a civil war installed a new, Communist government on the Chinese mainland. Doing so reveals the extent to which both Chinese governments had to rely on outside assistance to fulfil an important task of maintaining positive ties between Chinese abroad and the homeland. Using research from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives in Beijing and Taipei, as well as records from relevant parties in the British and American governments, this article places the repatriation programme and the larger efforts of the International Refugee Organization in Asia in a broader context of regional foreign relations and the origins of the Cold War.

In this article footnote 70 on page 20 should include the following: ‘Quoted in Ashutosh Kumar, “Anti-Indenture Bhojpuri Folk Songs and Poems from North India”, Man in India, 93 (4), 2013, p. 512 [509–19].’

On the same page, after the line ‘The victimized woman was glorified and acquired subjecthood only when she emulated the virtues and ideals of upper-caste Indian womanhood and wifely devotion, thereby overcoming the perceived stereotypes of Dalit woman’ the following footnote should have appeared: ‘Kumar, “Anti-Indenture Bhojpuri Folk Songs”, p. 513’.

The author regrets the error.

Trusteeship is Gandhi's conceptualization of the contribution of business houses towards social well-being. Trusteeship is a theoretical construct seeking to redefine the relationship between indigenous business houses and the nationalist movement. That Gandhi succeeded in persuading the business men to participate in the freedom struggle, despite adverse consequences, suggests the extent to which Trusteeship was an effective mechanism in political mobilization. Besides elaborating the concept, this paper also argues that Gandhi was indebted to Andrew Carnegie and John D. Ruskin, amongst others, in his effort to articulate Trusteeship as a bridge between business houses and the freedom struggle; and that this Gandhian idea is a forerunner of the contemporary conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility.